The following days passed in a blur. Aryan found himself shifting between two realities: the surface world, where school assignments and lectures still pretended to matter—and the world behind the curtain, where his blood sang with power and his mind was in constant dialogue with something beyond comprehension.
KAZIM didn't speak every day. It didn't need to. Its presence was like a constant low hum in Aryan's mind now—silent, but waiting. Watching. Occasionally, it would manifest again on his screen, delivering cryptic lines or posing questions that bent the edge of logic.
"Do you feel the frequency change when someone lies to you?"
"What is instinct, if not memory you don't recall learning?"
"What is strength, if not the ability to restrain wrath?"
These weren't teachings. They were provocations—sparks designed to make Aryan think deeper, question further, peel back the layers of his own existence. And beneath each question, Aryan felt a slow, subtle unlocking.
His senses were changing. He could now hear distant conversations through walls if he focused. He could sense the footsteps of people before they entered a room. Colors looked richer, movement slower.
Even in class, he noticed the tiny twitches on a liar's face, the skip in heartbeat when someone panicked, and the way time seemed to slow the moment he focused.
Something in his body was rewiring itself. Or maybe... something ancient was reawakening.
It was on the fourth night after KAZIM's appearance that Aryan had the first dream.
No, not a dream. A memory that wasn't his.
He stood in a forest. The air smelled of ash and sandalwood. A blade hung from his hip—not modern, but ancient, engraved with markings he didn't understand yet somehow recognized.
Across from him stood a man draped in saffron cloth, his eyes glowing not with malice, but divine fury.
"Do not hesitate," the man said. "The world bends to strength—but obeys only those who control it."
Aryan woke up in sweat, his body trembling, yet his heart calm.
"Was that... him?" "Was that Lord Parshuram?"
The dream had ended with Aryan swinging the blade—not at the man, but through fire—and the flame parting around it like water.
When he checked his hands the next morning, his palms were blistered. But he hadn't touched fire.
Something inside him whispered:
"The line between thought and action is thinning."
That day, during lunch at school, Aryan sat alone in the corridor. He no longer felt the pull to be social—not out of sadness, but because he was observing something deeper.
KAZIM spoke again, this time in his mind rather than through the screen.
"You are not a child playing warrior, Aryan. You are a warrior pretending to be a child."
"And the time for pretense is ending."
Aryan felt a pulse in his temple. Not pain. A signal.
He opened his phone. A new app appeared—one he hadn't downloaded. Its icon was a rotating triangle within a circle, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
When he tapped it, a grid appeared. A global map. Points of light shimmered, scattered across the continents. Most were dim. But one... pulsed just like his.
"What is this?" he whispered.
"Others," KAZIM answered. "Like you. Not awakened. Not yet. But their resonance is beginning."
"You must learn to guide them—or someone else will use them."
Aryan stared at the map. One point glowed in a location just two cities away.
His eyes narrowed.
"Then it's starting..."
"Yes," KAZIM responded. "And not everyone who awakens will walk the path of honor."
That evening, Aryan tested his abilities. He went to the empty football ground behind his school and began practicing with his chain.
But this time, he wasn't swinging it wildly. He moved with focus. Precision. Like a weapon born of discipline, not emotion.
He remembered what KAZIM had said:
"To strike effectively, become the stillness between two breaths."
He practiced techniques he had never learned: momentum redirection, tension release, and impact timing.
"When fighting with a chain, bring flexibility like a whip. It provides defense and attack."
By the time the sun dipped behind the school walls, Aryan stood in silence, the chain still in his hand, its end planted in the ground like a sword.
And for a moment, he saw something across the field.
A figure. Shrouded. Watching.
But when he blinked—it was gone.
"Was that... one of them?" "Or something else?"
That night, his computer came alive again. KAZIM's message was short.
"They know you exist now." "Prepare."
And beneath the message, one final sentence flickered into view:
"Power never wakes alone. It always brings enemies."
To be continued in Chapter 5: The Resonance Effect